


Had you known?

by not_all_who_wander_are_ohwaitshit



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drama, Maglor no, Mental Breakdown, Suicide, being the big brother is hard, maedhros survives, making canon worse, now with even more angst, please, so sorry Nelyo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 11:35:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6656269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_all_who_wander_are_ohwaitshit/pseuds/not_all_who_wander_are_ohwaitshit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU, in which Maedhros is not the one to fall.<br/>It´s Maglor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Had you known?

He should have seen it coming. In all honestly, he should have.

The damage inflicted by the stone was soft, at first. A tickling slowly extending through the fingers, around the base of the palm, no less than a mere annoyance. So unlike the sudden, unforgiving registers of **_raw_** he was used to. There have been a warning, caring, almost as if **It** regretted too.

Then it got worse. Tears prickling due to the roasting of flesh, the only reaction he was never truly able to master.

He willed his hold to be stronger at that, biting the inside of his cheek until he tasted iron, to hide a disgraceful whine.

There was some short of disturbing detachment, at the way the tall ellon kept staring down at his rosy skin. The brightness trapped in there cheating, making a contrast that did a marvelous job concealing moisture, glazed, emptiness of his eyes.

 _Yes_ , he was sure. This pain, he can endure. He had had it worse _– suddenly there is the echo of bloodied feet, chains and a whip_ \- but it is banished so quickly he can´t be sure.

However, his younger brother was another matter entirely.

At that moment of time, he was aware of absolutely everything. The desiccate newly acquired texture of the ground under leather boots, the charred smell of sulfur and demise in the air ( the holy armies, in their haste, had been merciless).

At that moment, he was very aware of Makalaurë´s crumbling, Makalaurë´s cursing. Makalaurë peeling out his own throat raw with a song-cry that tasted bitter like the blood on his tongue, the shout seemed never-ending as it wasn´t feeding on air.

At that moment, there was he, standing tall and passive, unspoken unmoving and absolutely much more relaxed than he had any right to. And his brother, tearing out his out hair, with the hand that wasn´t full of judgmental fire, trading It to the other hand once he wasn´t able to bear it longer _(His brother didn´t even appreciate just how fortunate he was)._ He was hitting his head on the process as well, presented burns on his forehead too, how reckless.

Maedhros kept on observing him by the corner of his left eye, face grim and apparently oblivious to any other who knew better than to ignore the erratic motion and twitch of his ear. He was hearing, just not listening. Waiting grimly for the younger´s hysteria to subside, a curious glint on the thin line that was his mouth.

He waited until the other dropped himself on the ground on all fours like a beaten animal. After a while, breathing uneven, he placed the now opaque silmaril in front of him, and sat upright in fetal position. Face on his knees and hands shaking too much to make a proper wall against reality.

There was something entirely surreal and terrible about it all, but for some reason Maedhros couldn´t bring himself to care. The part of him that was once able to feel pity had been such a good fuel all this time, it washed out far too quickly.

He looked up from his left when his little brother speaks, voice worn and decadent and sweet still.

“What......what now?”

Maedhros speech is slow and carefully moderated, keeping the burning ache out of it was hard even for one such as him.

“ Now, we keep going” The certainly sounded to his own ears hideous.

Maglor entire form shook as if slapped (But Maedhros would never hurt him, never like that).

His head snaps upwards and even though struggling, his brother finds the strength to stand up if only because he seemed to be centering all the rage of his line on Maedhros alone.

He shouts. His voice loud and full of power. However he should know better than to try that with the eldest.

“ Are you out of your mind?! HOW in the name of Illuvatar do you intend to do THAT ” Dementia and fury shine on Maglor´s look, he knows, he can tell.

“ By doing what we always do Káno” says Maedhros, never before having seemed any more regal.

“ How, HOW _BROTHER_? Because let me remind you I have followed _you_ here and I _verymuch_ would like to know how. HOW?

We can´t possibly stand **this** ”- he raises both blistered palms of his hands, then he sobs-  “ There is no way we can bear **_this_** anymore. The jewels **_forsake_**   _ **us**  _Nelyo!”

Maedhros tries to regain the feeling in some of his fingers. He is relieved when he finds out he still is able to, and hisses.

 _Yes_ , this pain, he is sure he can endure. He had had it worse – _And there is an echo of **golden** lines on a **red** background_ \- But it is gone so fast he might as well have imagined it.

“Káno-“ He tries, but Maglor interrupts him, unforgiving.

“ Tell me _Maitimo_ ”- He drags out his mother-given name as a mockery, bitterfull – “ Tell me HOW do you plan to keep going. When we have no land. No power. No people. We have no one to go back to! **ALL** OF OUR BROTHERS ARE DEAD – We are the **_dispossessed_** Maedhros- EVEN OUR _FATHER´S JEWELS REJECT US_ -” he shrieks.

Somehow, Kanafinwë seemed to be the very personification of wretchedness, the remaining piece on the cracked chess board.

“ _How_?? ........For there is literally **_no_** purpose left”

“That is untrue Káno- ” He says softly, easy. If only his brother would see how simple it was  “-There is still, the **Oath** ”

Makalaurë pauses a moment in his stupor, his delicate outlined faced frozen as the realization sinks in. Then he bursts.

Then he _laughs_. A beautiful, musical sound, far beyond crazed and senseless.

.......

He has always been a _macabre_ kind of person, his second brother. Always bringing forth beauty from brokenness, always taking delight in things he should not.

Like the drawn of kin´s blood- Or the flames on ships licking away betrayal- Or the orphaned children whose mother he had cast out himself.

........

Kanafinwë laughs, a songbird´s dream from fairytales and my, what a beautiful melody that it is. Glorious, all selfishness and downfall.

Maedhros watches impressed as his brother´s chest reverberates, falls up and down by the force of the guffaws.

There are pearls of water dripping from Maglor´s eyes and his mouth is opened so wide and free, that for a moment, he is a reminiscence  of times from the home they can´t go back to.

The eldest son of Fëanor does not know how much time had transpired until his brother stops, but it seemed neverending.

Under his unfocused gaze, Kanafinwë kneels and take the silmaril back into hand. Later, he rises and smiles, shining like a maniac.

“ _Yes_ \- _Of_ _course_ ” he says.

And then the second born turns around and walks away from him. As if he was ever the one to lead.

Maedhros blinks, confused, and turns his gaze back to the stone in his hand. Eyes straining, looking into it for the reflection, of a face that is not his own, with no luck.

When he blinks again, and realizes sunlight is almost non-existent.

_Nightfall already?_

He squeezes his father´s piece of soul closer to his chest with his one hand – _And oh, Father´s love has always been painful_ \- Seeks out his brother´s track and then follows.

* * *

 

It is easy, to locate Maglor´s fresh footsteps in the lifeless land, so withered and darkened by the grime, the carnage's ghost of hurried steeping plainly apparent. Walking over them is a conscious effort he is making, as his legs had always been longer.

The path he is being forced to go through is becoming straighter, more inclined. It feels like climbing a peak, but there were not any mountains nearby, it makes no sense. This landscape, a procession of slopes and gradients, a creased tapestry, was supposed to be flat.

How horrendous.

When the footprints come to an end he is breathing heavily, due to exertion. It is difficult moving upwards when both, the air and hand, are burning him. There is too, a remaindering feeling of dread crawling at his guts. He really does hate cliffs.

He should have known though.

In all honestly, when the footprints came to a close, and he sees _him_ -the end of the road, a lighthouse- For there is no further space behind Maglor, just nothingness and bad, bad contents laying below. He doesn´t need to look, he could recognize the taste of rock melting poisoning the air anywhere.

He should have known. He really should have, but there must be something terribly wrong with him.

He feels fear then, staring at the countenance of his brother´s back, at the burning inferno. The first real sentiment he remembers experiencing since so, so long. Far too long already.

Maedhros´ breathing is shallow, his heartbeat throbs strongly inside his ribcage, and when he dares to call out, he commits the mistake of letting it all show.

Makalaurë loses no time to face him, yet his eyes can´t help but to go back and check compulsively at his back, their spinning is distracting.

“Be careful brother” he says, the sound coming either too rough or too high- **_Discordant_** _, his little brother is **discordant**. Kanafinwë´s voice hadn´t been out of tune not once in his entire live_ -

Something is terribly wrong.

“ **Káno** -“ Maedhros gives, and steps forward and _orders_ “Get out of there, **now”**

“Be careful brother” Maglor repeats, the thin line of his lips opening and closing on its own accord  “ Don´t come closer. You might fall” he _smiles._

Maedhros is suffocating with desperation now, taking in, the scene around him. He tries coming closer, but regrets. He opens his mouth, then closes it. He moves the silmaril away from his chest and his eyes water at the feeling of _loss_.

“ It is not over. It is not, not yet” he says at the end. Maedhros tries to smile reassuringly but the scars make it coming out hideous.

Makalaurë, hit by another fit of hysteria, grins full of teeth and press his own silmaril to his breast, with both hands. He is grabbing it so harshly he is making them bleed.

“ _Oh_ _yes!_ ” he shouts, high-pitched. “There is still the **Oath** , isn´t there?-

_´Yes´_

_- **TO THE EVERLASTING DARKNESS DOOM US ALL IF OUR DEED FAILETH** ” _Maglor recites. Yet he couldn´t have. He couldn´t have spoken those again, out loud _, he can´t do that, dont you dare!_

His ears ring with the chilling – **_binding_ \- **senseof the words.

“ Did you know?” He continues, Maedhros isn´t sure he wants him to. “ That itwas **_me_** the one who composed that part?”

Makalaurë bends over himself as in great pain, then he whispers, a pitiful hurtful moan “ _Had you known Nelyo_?”

He would have liked to have something to say to that.

“That....” _Anything_  “That changes nothing Káno. It doesn´t matter” He does not intend to, but he is _begging_.

There is the rising of a whole crunched body and a sad, melancholy smile with no tears.

“ _Yes_ ” he answers “ **_Yes, it_** _**does**_ ”

And then Kanafinwë is suddenly taking far too much steps rearwards, still facing him, **_falling,_** _into the abysm._

Maedhros is moving, lurching out of instinct, forwards– Because he can see the panic, the _exact_ moment in which Makalaurë **regrets** \- towards his **little** brother reaching for the last thing he is left with in this marred world,  with the one hand that is not occupied.

And he sees it then, the exact moment, in which Maglor tries to grasp him and only meets thick air instead.

The shrinking of the pupils and one last grimace of pure, unadulterated _, **horror**_ before he fades away in the flames- _Because ‘ oh Nelyo **please** , tell me you didn´t ‘ **-**_

And Maedhros finally cries out then, in astonishment and aggravation, his scream being choked by that of sweet voiced Kanafinwë's. Until it doesn´t.

 **_Why_ ** _-.... what happened?_

He is still petrified, for he does not understand. Frozen on one knee, in the very same posture he had tried to bring his little brother back from the inferno. Arm still stretched.

A long while after there is no sound but that of his panting, he sees it.

There is a gap in his extended arm, on the place where the hand should have been, only a **stump**.

His _left_ arm, _whole_ , is the one still holding the silmaril _\- And  Oh_ ** _GOD_** -

 

He screamed.

* * *

 

Everything comes back to him then. In a rush of broken, dispersed, twisted, fragments of pictures barely joined together by the thinnest tread. Pictures so brief and blurred- pieces of sounds and cries and ashes and _everything_ is ** _red_** \- that he is not sure even if they are related to him at all. He is not sure he wants them to.

 _‘Yes’_ , he had always said _. ‘ This pain_ , _I can handle’_ he had always told himself. And yet this time-

This time, as he tries to muffle the _noises_ that are coming from his mouth, from his abused throat with the right hand, in vain, because the right is only a stump. A **_stump_**. And the stump is not good enough, he needed a _hand_ , he needed _fingers_. He had needed the hand and the fingers and he had used them to hold the _stone_ \- _His brother had seen that, **Káno** had seen **THAT** -_

He continued to slap his own visage,  getting it into his mouth, to bite and _claw_ at the round surface of the nothingness that was his arm over and over and over again, he couldn´t even begin to explain himself **why** he doesn´t just   _let_   _the_   _left_   ** _GO._**

 _‘Yes. This pain I can endure’_ He had always told himself. But now he is not sure. Because he does not think he had had it worse than **this** -

**_And Oh God, he is so sorry, he is always sorry_ **

\- And he can´t stand it anymore.

He does not want to stand it anymore, he thinks. He couldn´t.

He **can´t**.

Suddenly, Maedhros needs to flee. He needs to get out. Stumbling to find his feet he turns back, he does not dare to look back for his brother´s corpse – _Coward!_ \- , to look back for the jewel that might be trapped there – ** _Coward!_** -

He just can´t.

As he is about to descend, shuffling, down the cliff, he is frozen. Abruptly, he is assaulted by a thought of denial-

_And What if Makalaurë still lives?_

\- He remains, unmoving and mute and wide eyed for a moment, his mind spinning with different scenarios one mile per second. Because there was the possibility of Kanafinwë being _good_ , Kanafinwë being _fine_ , Kanafinwë being able to recover from the flames if he were just fast enough, if he _tried_ -

 _But even so, with such a damage, it would be better if he were to be **left** to die instead_ -

And ‘ _Oh’_ he thinks, ‘ ** _Oh’_** he realizes.

There is a certain amount of understanding, followed by the loss of deep buried resentment.

And with a certain short of clarity, some lightness in the soul that hadn´t been there before, Maedhros comes back to reality. Then he leaves.

* * *

 

Over him, Arien and Tilion chase each others more times than he bothers counting, all the while Maedhros walks.

He wanders with no path, no haste, and no destination. He travels back into memories of happier days and mayhems, drifting into past and present, and in all of them there is a tune, the lullaby his mother used to sing to him. But it is wrong, the voice is Kanafinwë´s.

Finally, he arrives, again, to the end of the road. But where once there was heat now lays cold, unforgiving waters that would so gladly swallow him would he allow it.

Maedhros stops, as close to the precipice as the edge between hardened rock and void lets him. He meets the waves´ rhythm with his own heartbeat and drinks in, the salty smell of the sea in deep. In an out.

Under his shoulders, all the weight of _binding_ , crushes him down, as he exhales.

All of sudden, it strikes him, that now he is _alone_. Utterly, grievously alone. For no one, absolutely no one, had run into him, no one had sought him out, no one had looked for him. No one- _his brother has been right_ _and my, how dared he to leave him alone, **again**_ _after_ -  _How **dared** he ?_

**_Always so selfish Káno_ **

However he had been still, surprised. He had thought the twins, at least, would have _cared_.

There are only the Oath and him, the stone and him, the little fragment of Fëanaro´s soul and him. He stares down at the jewel attached to his left hand, _still_ , and feels bitter, and feels _wrath_.

 **_It_ ** _has not been worth it._

He would have liked to curse It, curse the jewel and curse the Oath. He would have loved to cast it away and let It sink under the waters, where no light would be ever able to reach It ever again.

Yet, even if he wants to, he can´t. The, mutilated, useless for that is what it is now, arm which holds the stone is insensible. Neither his palm neither his fingers would respond to his command. The hand is death, dark black as coal, the gangrene spreading out upwards to the elbow without him even being conscious of it. Maedhros feels bile rising to his throat.

\- **_Black hands_**. _Now he has black hands too_ -


End file.
